Is marketing slimy?
- Wed, November 01 2006
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Q: Is it slimy to apply marketing to nonprofits?
A: Heck no!
1. Marketing is a tool. Tools aren’t good or evil. They are morally neutral methods that can be used for noble reasons or not. Marketing a good cause is a noble endeavor.
2. As people with a cause, we’re in the business of persuasion. Marketing is a way to be more convincing so that we’re better at persuading people to buckle up, donate, sign a petition, eat healthily, etc. Marketing isn’t “manipulation,” it’s a way of doing what we already do, better.
3. Marketing is respectful. Refusing to take into account the audience’s perspective and talking to people as if you’re hollering into a mission megaphone is not respectful. Asking people what they care about and then relating our cause to their values is respectful. Good marketing is a conversation, and that’s much less slimy than a soliloquy.
4. Marketing is efficient. What is immoral is slimy is not doing good marketing and wasting precious taxpayer or donor dollars on dealing with social issues ineffectively.
But, as I say in the book, there is a line.
We have to be true to ourselves. Marketing allows us to meet our audiences where they are, physically and mentally, but it does not require us to lose our own way. We should stay true to our mission, represent ourselves honestly, and promise only what we can deliver. In that way, we gain a competitive advantage over all the other folks using marketing for more nefarious ends.
Comments
You’re so right that that there’s nothing slimy
about offering people an opportunity to help improve people’s lives.
The sliminess associated with marketing usually comes up when marketing claims are exaggerated beyond reality—and beyond belief.
One way to learn how to avoid creating slimy marketing is to get face-to-face with people you want to communicate with so you can see what they respond to.
I think marketing is not a tool, it is a concept, or a set of concepts. That’s an important distinction. Concepts can be good or evil. They are not morally neutral. Marketing a good cause is only noble if the marketing activity is noble. The ends do not justify the means. I have taken marketing courses as a part of the nonprofit managemant and leadership program at the University of Missouri in Saint Louis. I have seen marketing concepts that use methods to keep people emotionally on edge (yes, it’s described just that way) in the belief that this leads customers buy more. Doing this would be in direct contrast to my organization’s mission. I read the section in the marketing textbook on the latest thing, “relationship marketing”. There was no discussion of what a relationship is, positive or negative; this, in a book aimed at a culture with a 50% divorce rate, where most violent crimes are committed by friends and family of the victim.
But I am sure that, whether they realize it or not, all nonprofits are engaged in marketing. So let’s be sure to do it conciously, ethically, and in accordance with our organizations’ missions. And let’s continue to examine our missions and our work as well.
Hi, I found this post going through your old articles and had to comment on it. I believe you are totally right if marketing is done in an honest fashion and gives people the truth and not some half truths that some of the more nefarious marketers use then it is no way slimy.